Aleksandr Mikhailovich (1905 - ?) dance hostess, cashier.

Shura had been born a girl and had passed puberty in the normal way. She grew up in Tomsk, Russia, where her father was a Tsarist official. He was killed during the Revolution and Shura had joined a group of refugees that ended up in Peking (as Beijing was then known to Europeans) in the 1930s.

There to earn a living, she became a cabaret dance-hostess. Being young and pretty, she was a great success, and even became engaged to a young Chinese general.

However by this time her body was starting to change. With time these changes became more and more obvious, and the amazed general hurriedly got himself transferred to another city. Shura changed almost to the point of being a man, with much facial hair, but retained a considerable bust.

Under the name of Aleksandr Mikhailovich, he returned to the nightclub, but as a cashier. At the time that John Blofeld visited him, Shura, still using that name, was taken as a gay man, and kept the photographs of his earlier glory prominently displayed.

• John Blofeld. City of Lingering Splendour: A Frank Account of Old Peking's Exotic Pleasures. Shambala. 1989 (1961): chp 5.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

In the 1930s there was no chance at all of Shura's condition being diagnosed, even if she had been in the cities of Berlin or London. However in Chicago, two gynecologists, Irving F. Stein, Sr. and Michael Leo Leventhal were identifying the syndrome that would carry their names. One can never really apply diagnoses to persons in the past, but I am presenting the case of Shura with that of Lynn Harris for comparison. It is possible that Shura had Stein-Leventhal Syndrome, otherwise known as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) which affects 1 in 10,000 births. That is, compared to transsexuality (1 in 500-1,000), it is quite rare.

• "Polycystic ovary syndrome". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stein-Leventhal_Syndrome

Lynn Edward Harris (1950 - ) actor, bookkeeper.

Lynn Elizabeth Harris was born in Orange, California, south of Los Angeles, with ambiguous genitals. She was not surgically ‘corrected’, and was raised as female. Her father was a character actor, who left when she was a young child. Lynn was an intelligent child who could recite Shakespeare at age 3.

Around age 5 she pulled down her panties and asked her mother to explain the strange growth between her legs. Her mother told her not to look at it. Her mother’s denial allowed Lynn to grow up without medical ‘correction’. Into her teens, she did not menstruate, she grew facial hair and her voice dropped. She took up acting at school, often playing androgynous parts, and won 14 acting trophies.

She also used makeup, shaving, depilatories and padding to pass as a girl. For gym class she always changed in the toilets, and took care to shower alone. She did this so well that she won several beauty competitions. She was the first Costa Mesa Junior Miss in 1968, which came with a college scholarship. But she was also asked on the street if she were a man in drag.

She left home at 19 to be an actress. She worked in the Los Angeles theater, supplemented by beauty retail work. She visited doctors and started taking estrogen in the hope of growing breasts. This also caused hot flashes, blood-sugar fluctuations and weight gain. A doctor suggested male hormones instead, and in 1973 he spent three days in hospital for tests and exploratory surgery. The diagnosis was Stein-Leventhal Syndrome, otherwise known as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) which affects 1 in 10,000 births. They told her that she would continue to masculinize further with age. She reacted by feminizing herself further.

She tried to talk to her parents, but they continued in denial. Lynn acted in small parts in obscure horror movies, such as Mother’s Day, 1980, and Big Meat Eater,1982. In theater she was being cast as middle-aged mothers, although she was only in her late twenties.

She found a counselor who pointed out that she was unhappy. How much worse could it be to live as a man? Lynn changed, almost overnight. He let his beard grow, bought male clothes, and changed his middle name. ‘Lynn’ he kept as it is also a man’s name. After four years, he applied to have his birth certificate re-issued. This was rejected because he did not have a doctor’s letter attesting genital surgery. However he persevered and is the first legal sex change without surgery in California.

Since then he has worked as a film-production bookkeeper, and has become an activist for the intersex community. His mother did not speak to him again for 10 years. He has relationships with men.

*Not the novelist E. Lynn Harris.

• Lynn Edward Harris. I, the Hermaphrodite (or More Lives Than One). Unpublished.
• "One Person's Gender Crisis: From beauty queen to man: Intersex stories".   Los Angeles Herald Examiner, September 28, 1988.  
• “Interview With the Hermaphrodite: The many faces of Lynn Harris”. OC Weekly. October 7, 1999. Online at gregstacy.wordpress.com/2006/11/25/interview-with-the-hermaphrodite-the-many-faces-of-lynn-harris.
• “Born True Hermaphrodite - Pictorial Profile”. Angelfire. www.angelfire.com/ca2/BornHermaphrodite.
• Lynn Edward Harris Papers, Coll2012-137, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, USC Libraries, University of Southern California.   Online.
• Zackary Drucker.  "Bring Your Own Body: The Story of Lynn Harris".  Art Journal, 72, 2, 2013.

Sybil Mounsey-Heysham.(1875 - ?) duck shot.

Sybil was born in Kensington, London, and raised in Dorset. She was known to her friends as 'Ba'.

Katherine Saomes, the mother of Olave, the future Lady Baden-Powell, wrote of the family friend, Sybil Mounsey-Heysham: 'a clever, original gentle, manly, astonishing and altogether delightful thing called Ba, who charms equally sportsman, child and critical woman - to which sex she officially belongs! This is, however, only a fact she cares to emphasize on rare occasions.'

Sybil had cropped hair and wore a collar and tie and tweeds, and bound the lower part of her trousers with puttees. She was reputed to be one of the three finest duck shots in Britain, and said that her father's head gamekeeper had taught her all that she knew. She had a gaunt, sharp featured face. She was generally unkempt with buttons missing and shoelaces trailing. It was frequently said of her that she should have been a man.

She never married.

• Tim Jeal. The Boy-man: the Life of Lord Baden-Powell William Morrow and Company, Inc 1990: 432-3.
• “The Mounsey-Haysham Line”. The Hissem-Montague Family. http://balder.prohosting.com/shissem/Hissem_Mounsey-Heysham_Line.html.

Andreas Krieger (1966 - ) shotput champion, retailer.

Heidi Krieger started at the Sports School for Children in East Berlin in 1979. At age 16 the coaches started her on Anabolic Steroids, without her understanding. She quickly outgrew her clothes. By 18, she was 100 kg, had a deep voice and facial and body hair. On the streets she was subjected to homophobic taunts, and was called a drag queen in front of her mother. After that she never wore a skirt again.

In 1986 Heidi won the European shotput champion with a record 21.1m. In 1988 in training, she lifted 100 tonnes of weights in a two week period. The strain damaged her knees, hips and back, and by 1991 her career was over. For even longer, she was in denial that she owed her career to steroids rather than skill and determination.


In 1995, Heidi met a transsexual, and decided on the same change. Two years later he transitioned to Andreas. “The doping probably didn’t directly cause my transsexuality but it certainly intensified it”.

In 2000 Andreas testified against Manfred Ewald, leader of the East German sports program who was convicted of accessory to the intentional harm of athletes. The “Heidi Krieger Medal” is given annually to Germans who combat sports doping.

He met Ute Krause, an East German swimmer, at the Ewald trial, and in 2002 they married. Andreas now runs a clothing shop in Magdeburg (map). He still has physical problems from the anabolic steroid treatment.

*Not the Danish politician.

• Roger Boyes. “Sex-change athlete sues pharmaceutical company”. The Times. 11 June 2005. www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1649616,00.html.
• Jere Longman. “East German Steroids' Toll: 'They Killed Heidi' “. New York Times. Jan 2, 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/sports/othersports/26STER.html?ei=5007&en=bc039fed4c6ea23a&ex=1390453200&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=print&position=.

 DE.Wikipedia.

Nadia Brönimann (1969 - ) travestie-dancer, steward, butler, performer.

Christian Brönimann was born in Memmingen, (map) West Germany. He was adopted by a Swiss couple in 1975. He trained in hotel management.

From 1988-93 he was a travestie-dancer in Geneva, Berlin and Basel. In 1994 he was a steward on luxury yachts in the Mediterranean. Then he ran a sandwich business in Tauranga, New Zealand for a year, then returned to Switzerland as a butler to a woman billionaire.

Christian transitioned to Nadia with 14 operations in 1998. The health-insurance cost of these operations was reported in the press. She has published two books, been the subject of a television documentary, and has become a performer.

• Nadia Brönimann & Danial J. Schüz. Die weiße Feder. Hat die Seele ein Geschlecht?. Bern: Zytglogge-Verlag 389 pp 2001.
• Alain Godet (dir). Sex-Change - Wie Christian zu Nadia wurde, with Nadia Brönimann. Switzerland TV 53 mins 2004.
• Nadia Brönimann & Alfred Wüger. Seelentanz: Ich folge meinem Weg. Zurich: Woa 256 pp 2006.
• www.nadiabroenimann.ch.

Lechane Bezuidenhout (1967 - ) princess.

Leon Bezuidenhout was a Telkom technician in Pietersburg, (map) now renamed Polokwane in Limpopo, South Africa.


Leon transitioned to Lechane in 1992 with surgery with Dr Michel Seghers in Belgium, where she worked as a waitress before returning to South Africa in 1995.

In KwaZulu-Natal she used the name Princess Charné. With her husband, Prince François, she promised the director general of the provincial government that her nonexistent African Business Development Consortium would invest R800m in a resort near Port Durnford. She claimed to be descended from a Dutch prince and a Sotho princess, and appeared before the province’s constitutional committee to get her lineage recognized.

She and her husband ran up debts of R120,000 from their lifestyle and as part of registering a purported African Television Network, which cost R13,000.

In 1998, at the expense of a local businessman, they went to Limpopo where they attempted to get Rain Queen Mokope Modjadji to validate their lineage. She refused and the media paid attention and exposed both of them, and outed the princess as transsexual. They quickly disappeared.

In 2004, Bezuidenhout reappeared, again in South Africa, claiming to be an Albanian princess raised in South Africa. She was arrested after convincing investors to loan R100,000 against inflated returns after she regained her Albanian title.

• “Lechane Bezuidenhout”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lechane_Bezuidenhout.
• Greg Ardé. “Once upon a R100,000 fraud charge”. The Mercury. June 11, 2004. www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=283&fArticleId=2109524.

Craig Russell (1948 – 1990) female impersonator.

Russell Craig Eadie, aka Craig Hurst, was born in tiny Port Perry, (map)Ontario. His parents divorced when he was 9.


In his teen years he founded the International Mae West Fan Club and on the basis of that was invited by Mae West to become her personal secretary. She fired him when she caught him trying on her clothes and makeup.

Back in Toronto Craig finished high school, worked as a typist and hairdresser, changed his name to Russell and started building a career as a drag artiste who used his own voice - one of the last to do so. He also helped Rusty Ryan to get started as a drag artist. Craig had a three-octave vocal range and could impersonate Barbra Streisand in her own key. He could perform a duet between Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

He became friends with a schizophrenic writer, Margaret Gibson, and for a time shared an apartment with her. In 1976 Gibson published a collection of short stories, The Butterfly Ward, which includes ‘Making It' about Liza, a pregnant schizophrenic in Toronto and her exchange of letters with Robin, a rising female impersonator. The collection was much praised and the story ‘Making It' was expanded in 1977 into the film Outrageous!, although the focus of the story was shifted to Robin.

The film was a great success and made Russell into the star he wanted to be. This film was the first commercial success to have a gay character played by a gay actor. He was voted Best Actor at the Berlin festival. At the Virgin Islands festival Russell was voted both Best Actor and Best Actress. The film contains Russell's impersonation of Mae West, and this, combined with West's own film, Sextette, bombing at the time, lead to a final break between the two of them.

The follow-up film, Too Outrageous! was not made until 1987, and quickly died without a trace.

As Mae West died three years after her final bomb, so did Craig Russell after his.

In 1992 Margaret Gibson published another collection of short stories, Sweet Poison, one of which is ‘Golden Boy' where the drag performer is now called Phineas and the writer friend Meg. He had once starred in a film based on her life for which she received only $2,000 and almost no credit. Phineas has changed and become mean and violent.

Although openly gay, Russell married one of his female fans, Lori Jenkins, in 1982. He had also fathered a daughter in 1973. He died of a stroke related to AIDS.

Margaret Gibson died of breast cancer in 2006.

*Not the British novelist, nor the US composer, nor the US comic book writer/artist.

• Margaret Gibson. “Making It”. In The Butterfly Ward. Ottawa: Oberon Press 1976. Toronto: A Totem Book 1979. New York: Vanguard Press 1980. Toronto: HarperCollins 1994.
• Craig Russell with photographs by David Street. Craig Russell and his Ladies. Toronto: Gage Publishing 1979. New York: Methuen 1979.
• Margaret Gibson. “Golden Boy”. In Sweet Poison. Toronto: Harper Collins 1993.
• Robert Fulford. “The 3 a.m. Craig Russell – again”. The Toronto Globe and Mail. 1994.
• “Craig Russell”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Russell_(actor).
• David de Alba. “Craig Russell”. http://www.david-de-alba.com/russell.htm.